Over the years, I've seen something come up time and time again from Offbeat Bride readers: people will send an email, post on the Offbeat Bride Tribe, or leave a comment that basically amounts to, "Do I REALLY count as an Offbeat Bride? Do I really belong here?"

Most recently it was a post on the Offbeat Bride Tribe, wherein a Tribesmaid admittedly (guiltily!) she was working with a sizable wedding budget.

Over the past six years, we've featured a lot of different weddings, all of them in some way a noteworthy and authentic expression of the couple getting married.

They all belonged here, and yet still: there's a huge amount of anxiety from Offbeat Brides about not belonging.

I think of it as the Offbeat Bride's version of othering: those of us who've defined ourselves as non-normative push ourselves away from other people. The push makes sense, of course — if you live in a region where your politics aren't aligned with those around you, of course you're going to feel a push, and like you need to clearly define yourself as "not that." There are a lot of social and cultural contexts where it makes perfect sense that people who feel a little bit off the beaten path would push against the people and society around them.

Oh, someone shared advice that might hold a piece of truth for me, but it's not EXACTLY a match with my situation so not only will I ignore it, but I'll point out the ways in which it's not relevant to me and therefore stupid.

Oh, my aunt offered to help with the flowers and we're totally broke but I bet she'd just do stupid carnations from the grocery store, so I'm going to turn her down even though we could really use the assistance.

This picture was taken the night of the dance event in question.
Let me not cast the first stone, here: I am absolutely guilty of othering. I went to a community event recently that was about 90% just right for me: hippie-ish dance event in a yoga studio with electronic music being played by a DJ I know and like. It started early in the evening, so I wasn't fighting against my circadian rhythm. It was all ages so even my son could go dance. I had several friends there. And yet what did I spend most of the night doing? I stood back and "other-ed" myself, finding all the ways in which I didn't relate to the people around me. Ew: people are doing contact improv? I hate contact improv. Ew: that old hippie guy wants to give me a massage — BOUNDARIES, people! Ew: are those people actually doing yoga on the dance floor? Too much: stop being so pretentious. I spent most of the night making my bitchface.

Sure: maybe the event wasn't a perfect fit for me… it happens. But rather than sink into the joy of finding the pieces that did lined up (dancing! connecting! authentic aha moments!), I spent most of the evening setting myself apart, other-ing.

Almost every wedding idea I have, someone else here has had before me, and someone else will have it again after me. So how to... Read more

Some of this is just human nature, of course. But some of it is a unique challenge-point for people who've grown up defining themselves by their otherness. If you were the weird kid in high school, you probably have a lingering alienation fetish. Feeling different and "other" can become comfortable and almost reassuring. It's your jam. You're the weird one! (Even when you're surrounded by other weird ones!)

You might think, then, that our more traditional readers wouldn't deal with this as much. Since many more traditional readers are a bit less "out there," a bit better integrated into mainstream culture, and a bit less other-y, you'd think they would wrestle with the siren song of other-ing themselves.

I worry that I contribute in some way to this anxiety, despite the fact that over the years I've practically written a second book about how brides do not need more ways to feel bad about our weddings, your wedding is not a contest, and engaged women don't need another voice telling them they're failing. (Nor do they need another voice tell them they're an outsider.) But what I'm recognizing more and more (both in myself and my readers) is how often that voice is internal.

The dirty flip-side of "my wedding is too weird" is "my wedding isn't weird enough." Both sentiments make me sad because your wedding is not... Read more

No one made me feel like an outsider at that dance event I went to. I was offered back rubs, approached to dance, hugged and smiled at. So why did I spent the evening finding all the ways that I had nothing in common with anyone else in the room?

I think of it as like picking an emotional scab. It's a familiar sensation (ah… delicious alienation where I am the specialist, most differentest snowflake!) and can even be deeply motivating. Heck, I started this website as a reaction against feeling "othered" by mainstream wedding websites, and not even disliking the way nontraditional wedding websites were structured. Pushing against can be powerful… but it can also be tremendously isolating, and a huge waste of time. Construction is so much more valuable than demolition!

I don't really care about what you DON'T want at your wedding. It's easy to point at things other people have done and shout No!... Read more

I would argue that Offbeat Brides need support as much or more than other couples, because they're questioning wedding traditions and a wedding industry and a wedding culture. But in our efforts to find our ways to a wedding that feels like an authentic, realistic expression of our relationships and communities, we must work not to push away those who want to help us or those who want to relate to us.

As I recounted over here, sometimes we'll get blog comment saying something like, "We're wearing Converse at our wedding, and my parents think we're crazy!" And I'll reply with "Oh, you're not crazy… lots of people wear Cons!" I'm trying to be reassuring ("…other people have overcome these same challenges!") but sometimes the response is heartbreak: "Oh, I thought we were special. Now I feel unspecial." If you've developed your identity around a sense of alienation… it can be disconcerting to suddenly be part of a larger community.

About one-and-a-half years into what is shaping up to be a four-year engagement, my future brother-in law proposed to his then-girlfriend. I love these people... Read more

In the push to define your wedding as your own, you have to watch yourself carefully to make sure you're not pushing away the family and community members who are ready to support you. They might be clumsy, or old fashioned, or have a different vision than you, but their intent is most likely good. Likewise, even the most offbeat of us have more in common with folks planning more mainstream weddings than we may be ready to admit — everyone's stressed, everyone's dealing with family and money and event planning; we're all just freaking out. I worry that sometimes we're all in such a hurry to "other" ourselves that we push ourselves away from the communities that are waiting to embrace us. I think it's critically important that we step back for a moment, stop fiddling over the differences, and start finding the shared experiences.

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Ariel

Author of the Offbeat Bride book, Ariel acts as the publisher of all the Offbeat Empire websites. She lives in Seattle with her son, and if she's not reading or writing books, chances are good that she's dancing or happy-crying. You can get to know her better on her Insta stories.

This kind of makes me thing of how EVERYONE in graduate school at some point experiences imposter syndrome, even though most of us are FINALLY finding a place with Other Nerds Like Us. We're just so used to feeling like the weirdo that when we find the other weirdos, transitioning to being comfortable is a process that for some of us OBB's, involves some questioning.
I am so happy with the support of this community!

This made me of this TED talk, because the speaker describes that kind of experience at one point.

That's not the main topic of the talk – but now that I've thought of it, I have to leave this link here because it's really worth watching. Maybe worth submitting to offbeat home as a life hack or something even! Check it out!

Yeah, there is that weird way of us clinging onto what made us different or 'special' from the mainstream in our youth and finding like minded people is both exciting and scary.

I've been very open minded. I can see how quickly people try to express their difference like its a competition. My own friends to it to another, in which i need to play mum and remind them that no-ones more special but were all unique. i think that's key.

So far, i've not had wedding envy or the feeling its a contest (i nearly did on another sites where brides started bragging about 'budget' they were!) in fact, the fact people have had done the same thing gives me confidence to do it! and backing to show my mum. I like being different but i also don't like being centre of attention, so i tend to be quirky but almost blend in. like an inside joke. that's why i regard myself as being offbeat lite.

I have seen something and been a bit 'other' like some weddings and gone WOW WTF?! But then felt so guilty. everyone is different and if its their thing then let them do it! they were brave enough to do it so kudos!

Budget one-lowsmanship, where how little money you spend is a matter of stern pride, and you get judgey about how much others spend. It's all forms of status-seeking and seriously: that's just fine. We all status seek — the issue is laying off the judgment of people who are seeking a status different than yours.

I had to chuckle when I read this because I most definitely am a culprit of one-lowmanship. In response to,"I love your dress!", I have to reply "Oh thanks! It was 2 bucks." I can't help but gloat about my extreme stinginess because, hot dang, I am sternly proud!

I hope I don't come off judgey about peoples spending habits. I certainly don't feel judgemental towards the big spenders, but my perplexity may indeed come across that way!

I've been on the receiving end of one-lowmanship. It's not nice. It makes you feel wasteful, especially when we're constantly surrounded by credit crunch reminders. Reading that article made me feel much better. We're helping vendors do business! We're helping the economy! It's certainly not for any one-upmanship! It's not our fault that we're fortunate enough to have different priorities that allow a bigger budget. Ergh, I feel dirty saying that. The shame is there even though it's not intended in any horrible way :-/

Awesome, as always. Makes me think about my identity as a bride specifically: stepping back from the wedding choices that we feel need to be decidedly offbeat, there was first the choice of a significant other to be made. I would venture that there are a lot of older brides on this site (myself included), and that many of these older brides have spent years as the single women who got to be the Other because they played the "I'm never going to meet someone" mantra over and over again. I was busy being Jaded Single Girl like it was my job. So imagine my surprise meeting an optimistic, earnest, amazing man who believed in the optimistic, earnest, amazing part of me hiding underneath the hilarious but miserable overly social single party gal persona I had been working on for years.

Deciding to let go some of that was a major step: a major life change. There was too much good to be had in the new relationship. It took a while to drop some of the affectations of Jaded Single Girl but it has been well worth it. I guess that's also why I like substituting the 'offbeat' title of the site with 'authentic'.

Interesting! I see "othering" a lot in younger brides who are grinding through that intense identify-development mode that defines a lot our early-20s (it certainly defined mine!)… but you make great points about the ways that OLDER brides wrestle with this same issue! SO incredibly true.

As a second time bride, at 40, what Erin said totally clicks for me, too, only I was jaded, sarcastic woman who happened to be married. And then, a little less jaded happy single woman.

Settling into the fact that ok, I'm getting married AGAIN, and this time the fact of marriage really MATTERS to me, and that the marriage is going to look a lot more traditional than the last, and I'm happy – hard work. And hard to just accept how happy everybody is for me, without panicking that I'm not *different* enough anymore.

Well, a bit of navel-gazing, but you folks put together a lot of puzzle pieces that were scattered about my head.

My wedding is getting close (5 months) and its shaping up a little less Offbeat than we thought. There are a number of things we wanted to do but realized cost more than we were willing to spend and are beyond our creative- DIY- abilities. So we've sacrificed and changed things.

Does that make me less Offbeat? I know its making my wedding less Offbeat on the surface. Will my invited friends think I've 'sold out'? When In reality, it was the unwillingness to sell my soul and want my family, guests to be comfortable.

As the larger budget tribesmaid in question, thank you for writing this!!! I only felt a little bit guilty about our budget (honest). Funnily enough, as an older bride, I guess I haven't truly grown fully away from that little nagging voice in my head that says 'you don't quite belong here do you'. I am pleased that I wrote the journal entry as it lead to some really interesting comments and made me realise I was not the only one having these thoughts.

I totally felt guilty about how much we spent for our wedding and how nearly-normal it was. Sure, I had a lot of red on my dress, but it was mostly ivory. Sure, I had ZERO flowers, but we had other weddingy decor like centerpieces and bubbles. My man walked down to "Back in black", but I wore a full veil. Several times in the planning process, I voiced my concerns to my fiance' that we weren't weird enough. We stayed true to US and had a great wedding, exactly what we wanted.. but I felt the way I've felt my whole life… less cool than everyone else I'd seen. I didn't have that costume wedding like someone else fondly told me about. I didn't have a food truck drive up and wow the guests with that. I didn't have a smores campout in the woods people would be talking about for years. I worry that our wedding, even though it was what we wanted, was utterly forgettable to everyone but us. In an age of instant gratification and digital communication, I was scared that if it wasn't CRAZYPANTS, it would be over and done in a week and that was it.

It never even occurred to me to think this, I've identified as a freak my whole life… and having you feature my wedding was really just icing on the metaphorical cake! I hope other folks don't think "oh no the reason they didn't feature my wedding was it wasn't actually offbeat!". I know you have to pick and choose. If you hadn't chosen me I'd've figured it was because you had too many goth/halloween weddings to pick from, not because it was too normal!

The one way our wedding definitely wasn't offbeat WAS the budget though. Which was pretty much exactly average for the area we live in. We economized on a bunch of things but then REALLY SPLURGED on awesome food because the spouse is a super foodie. So I think we actually had a cheaper than average wedding with more expensive than average food!

We totally had an OffBeat wedding, and by that I mean pretty much everything we did in our wedding we got from OffBeat Bride. The vows, the reading my kids did during the ceremony, the courage to not have *any* music during the ceremony, the guys' attire, and so many other things were all gleaned from the Tribe.

Our overall budget was about $20K, but $12K of that was for the caterer, which my parents generously paid for, and we decided to splurge for a friend's 11 piece Cuban salsa band that accounted for almost half the remaining budget.

And let me tell you, it was exactly the wedding we wanted! A simple, elegant wedding with fabulous food, and a kick ass band! We got a number of comments afterward about how touching and personal it all was, which was precisely what we were shooting for.

Thank you! I've been feeling this way a lot with my identity, and to some degree with my wedding, but mostly with my entire identity. I've been "othering" from my community, such that I started drafting a bitchy reflection piece about how I don't practice Judaism, but "I'm Not You"-diasm. Othering feels really good, but it also feels like a huge pain sometimes. You really captured this feeling!

This post has come at such an awesome time for me. I am not yet officially engaged, but my man and I are in serious talks. I wanted a very traditional pretty wedding… until he mentioned he wanted a Star Wars wedding. We're both SW geeks so I was all for it and started thinking of a million and one kitschy ways to make it SW-y. But… this was not the pretty, traditional-looking wedding that I always wanted. It was campy, not gorgeous. So I realized a few days ago looking through my secret pinterest boards that I could meld the two and go less kitschy. There's nothing that says I can't incorporate touches of our nerdiness and still have the wedding my parents want to pay for with soft flowers (maybe silk/crepe handmade) and pretty china. And there's nothing saying I can't accept their financial help if I want to be Offbeat.

I think "Offbeat-Lite" might be a misnomer. We're all just as offbeat, in our own ways. Some may wear goth/steampunk clothing on a regular basis, while the rest of us practice yoga and envision the Force… It's not just what others see, it's who we are.

Aw crap. I didn't mean to imply any hatred of the phrase. The linked article is a good one, and I appreciate the tongue-in-cheek use. I guess my point is that when people identify witha group, it makes it easier to Other in the way suggested by this article. I try to keep labels off of people (mostly myself) because I think it perpetuates the snap judgements we all make at one time or another. And I just don't like being judge-y.

I've been dealing with this in a very non-Wedding respect. I have spent my whole life TERRIFIED of the dentist after some really traumatic experiences growing up. It has been this strange thing, like, you may not like the dentist, but I have a PHOBIA. Ha! I win! It is a silly thing to incorporate into one's identity, but that is what happened. And then recently, for the first time in about 6 years, I finally went back to the dentist. A really really good dentist that made me trust her and… I'm not so afraid anymore. It has been this weird re-evalutation of that part of my identity to cut out that fear. I think it can initially feel really uncomfortable to let go of a thing that we use to Other ourselves, but it also feels really good. In all aspects, I just have to take a deep breath and acknowledge that my Special Snowflake-ness shines without having to compete about it.

Kudos, Ariel! I think more than anything else, what drives the awesomeness of OBB is that you're such a keen, insightful, introspective, and compassionate observer of the human condition. I may not relate to or like all the featured weddings or other items, but I always find a nugget (or many) of self in your posts. You write about human feelings in a way that is anything but othering to me.

I'm definitely Lite. But, my personal sense of other goes back so far. I didn't feel comfortable with myself or "cool" until I stopped trying to fit the mold and went well in the other direction, sometime around 16 years old. My friends didn't change, and I always had them, but how I presented and viewed myself did–and it worked for me. The othering was empowering. Some of it has stayed with me, although manifests in some different ways in my mid-30s. What's stayed, though, is an almost disdain for all things popular. I tend to intentionally live in a pop culture vacuum…I have no idea who most A-list celebraties are, googled Gangnam Style less than a month ago…but it's part of my "brand" of other. That, ew, I just don't care about stuff like that. The reality, though, is that it's more on principle (and the habit of not paying attention) than the need to establish myself as "me" and other, anymore.

So, my wedding is only slightly offbeat, in an objective way (although my über traditional mom thinks it's just soooo unusual), and it tends to be offbeat in ways that are sometimes "traditionally offbeat" and in some ways not. I had moments early in my OBT days where I doubted if this was the right place for me…hell, for months I was left thinking "what the hell is a tardis and why are people so excited about it" (I finally googled it). But, what kept me here and allowed me to get over othering (or fighting the othering) is the community, the philosophy, of OBB and OBT.

What you said, perfectly, that no matter what kind of wedding you're planning–it's a ton of work, there are similar stresses, and everybody finding their way to the wedding that's right for them. So, I'm wearing a white-spectrum dress, I'm not cooking or crafting the hell out of everything, there'll be a plated dinner and DJ, many of the usual trappings. But it will be colorful and light-hearted and will reflect the joy we find in each other and having a hell of a party with friends and family.

I tend to other myself with music, and it's something that's niggled at the back of my mind…what to tell the DJ, do I give her a no-play list and a play list filled with the semi-obscure stuff I enjoy, so that I don't feel like othering myself at my own wedding. The answer is clearly HELL NO! Because, then I'd be leaving my guests out in the cold, my husband, too. I hired a pro, and I picked her because she's done many if my friends' weddings and is great at her job. So, of Gangnam Style plays, I can take that as an opportunity to hit the bathroom, get a fresh drink, step outside to cool off.

But, your post has made me reflect on the feelings about it…I might have been predisposed to other myself (and be a bit resentful that *gasp* something that's not my thing is besmirching my wedding), but with new self-awareness, I think I can step away and enjoy moment to myself and be happy to watch my friends doing a silly dance and having a wonderful time.

So, thank you…for your keen observations and your conscious effort to identify and reflect on human behavior and use it to continue to foster a compassionate, helpful, and tolerant community!

This is a wonderful piece and it extends so far beyond wedding planning. I love that you gave of example of a time you did this recently in a non-wedding context. I "other others" less now that I'm older, and when I do it now I try to figure out what I am responding to instead of falling down a wormhole of criticism. It is way to easy to spend a whole evening dissing someone you don't even know that well for one little thing they did that rubbed you the wrong way.

EXAMPLE: An acquaintance of mine just got engaged in a very romantic locale and then put it up on the internet with a whole buncha hatchtags and a photo of her and her ring and her now fiance. My husband and I proceeded to "discuss" this event for the entire evening, but what that really meant was that we pretty much just dissed her and her fancy proposal. UNTIL, I said, "Wow, we don't know her that well. There must be something about her that we really respond to," and from there we went onto trying to figure that out and that was a much, MUCH more rewarding conversation.

This is an amazing post because it's something that I definitely do in every aspect of my life. I have definitely found as I am maturing that I am trying to do more of the constructive things you mention than sit around with bitch-face, but it's a hard habit to break. My problem is family members who have different political/religious views than me. I want to be connected to them, but distanced at the same time. That's especially hard when planning a wedding ceremony and I still haven't found the right way to go about it.

I struggled with the issue of the ceremony for quite a long time during my planning process.

My family is very religious, I am not, and the mister is very anti religion. How on Earth could I possibly please everybody? Simply put: I could not nor did I need to. We (*ahem* I) wrote the ceremony focusing on the love between the mister and I. There was no mention of God or Jesus or religion of any kind during the ceremony. You know what there was a whole butt load of? Mentions of how our new stage in life NEEDED the support of every single person present that day. There were metric tons of references to our love for one another.
You know what nobody missed (or at least had the sense not to mention to us)? G-O-D

If you are spiritual or religious or not, ultimately your ceremony is the part of the day that binds you and your partner together. It's the reason for the whole gosh darned thing. In my opinion, it would be very sad to have a ceremony that spoke to something that you didn't believe just for the sake of placating someone else.

Little side note: we kept my parents happy by asking Dad to say grace before the meal. It didn't change our day or make us uncomfortable… it felt very good to let him express his wishes in a way that was appropriate for us

I think also that another point worth making is that "offbeat" is a relative concept depending on where you are. Where I was living before, church weddings were the standard, typical thing to do. Now I live in a very secular city and the fact that I'm having a church wedding has raised a few eyebrows. Here, a church wedding is the offbeat thing to do! So there's no point in worrying about how offbeat you are. As has been raised before, it's about authenticity to what is most important to you.

I am so glad to see this post. I had a conversation two nights ago with a friend about this very thing in a non-bridal context. She had been doing some serious othering at a work event and I was trying to point it out to her. I used to do the same thing all the time as a teenager because I had been so badly bullied as a kid. You describe it SO WELL here, because that sense of being different, being other, becomes almost a survival mechanism. This idea that different = better and weird = awesome gets so woven into who we are that it's really hard to get outside of that box we've so cleverly built for ourselves.

When I got to university, I found myself constantly feeling inadequate because I wasn't ever geeky/gothy/nerdy enough for the people I was hanging out with. I liked fashion magazines AND D&D, but somehow they never believed I was REALLY into gaming (serious "fake geek girl" attitude going on there). I got called out numerous times for not being alternative enough, and it wasn't until I moved away that I realized how much it screwed me up. I started meeting people with whom I had lots of things in common, save that they didn't really game or they weren't really into the etymology of the English language (or whatever my new thing was). But we had fun, and they were cool, and my old friends hated I that I liked them because they were "too normal" (read: boring and threatening). My "alternative" friends kicked back hard against anyone who was mainstream – god forbid you enjoy some Britney Spears alongside your Nightwish. It was like I was a traitor to the Weird Kid Club by having mainstream interests and "mainstream" friends. However, if I hadn't taken a step back and stopped othering myself, I wouldn't have met my husband or some of my closest friends. Having fewer options in my new city meant I had to give people a chance that previously I wouldn't have spoken to at all, and holy crap did I benefit from that! (Plus I got some killer stories out of the friend-dates that went really badly).

My theory is that the very things that help us get through school as weird kids who are othered by our peers are the same things that make it really hard to stop othering ourselves as adults. We've convinced ourselves that being super different is what makes us unique and special and awesome that we overlook the real things making us unique, special, and awesome. We focus too much on whether we're different enough instead of celebrating the fact that we're just plain cool. So we stand back and avoid talking to anyone who might reject us for being weird because we're a lot cooler than they are. Daisy got it when she realized her coworkers had been trying to hang for weeks and the only reason she could come up with for avoiding them was that she thought they looked too normal and wouldn't "get" her. I had to remind her that I look totally normal these days and no one would ever suspect that I had been a massive weirdo as a kid. Books, covers, all that jazz ;).

"If you've developed your identity around a sense of alienation… it can be disconcerting to suddenly be part of a larger community."

Most of my friends are the ones I met at the Honor's Dorm in college. All of us were super excited to suddenly be around people as smart as we were. To have in depth, intelligent conversations where people didn't get bored or annoyed. At the same time, though, a lot of us had trouble adjusting to the fact that were not automatically the smartest kid in the room anymore. Heck, some of us are STILL pissing each other off because of our arrogant or condescending tones. It is not uncommon to hear someone say "You know, you aren't smarter than me." We went from being a default authority on whatever it was we were talking about to hanging out with a group where people might not only disagree with us, but actually be able to prove us wrong. It's intimidating.

So that sentence really struck me – in a way that has nothing to do with weddings. I feel like so many of the conflicts in the nerd/smart kid community almost always come back to that.

YES! I went to a top engineering school and it was a huge shock to go from breaking the curve in high school to suddenly being average, or below average, in certain situations. At the same time, though, it was so liberating to not have to be "the smart one" anymore and actually figure out who I really was. It's still an ongoing process, but not being put in someone else's "NERD/SMART" box right away was an awesome revelation.

Geez, I think I'm guilty of this my whole life, not just my wedding planning! Especially in my Uni degree. Thank you Ariel, hopefully I might just be able to snap out of it and fully, truly embrace the experience for the remaining months…

In my time on the Tribe, I decided that ultimately, what makes a wedding offbeat is if it's what you want and what you love, whether it's quirky or mainstream. What bugs me about the Knot and similar stuff isn't so much the style (there's some beautiful stuff) but that fact that I was being told I had to do things a certain way or I was being wrong or something. If next year they suddenly said that plaid and polka dots were the thing to have as wedding colors, would offbeat brides suddenly run to pastels to be different? I hope not. If you want plaid, have plaid. If you want pastels, have pastels. Make your wedding what you want and what makes you happiest and baby, you're offbeat.

This is so true and something to keep in mind in order to stop pushing people away: "If you've developed your identity around a sense of alienation… it can be disconcerting to suddenly be part of a larger community."

I joined a women's chorus last year, and I thought I was going to be way too weird for everyone, but a lot of these women are weird – in a lot of different ways. I love that, and at the same time, it took me by surprise. I am still changing my assumptions and trying to pay attention to the reality of who the individual people are.

I'm in a twelve-step group ("Hi, BunnySlippers!"), and there I was introduced to the term "terminal uniqueness" – we convince ourselves that our problems and situations are so unique that no one could possibly understand them and so shut ourselves off from others, making ourselves more isolated, further reinforcing this idea that we're so unique no one could possibly understand us … and so on. It's actually a really dangerous mindset, because it breeds disconnection, which can lead to depression and and feelings of inadequacy.

Today I dare you all to foster connections instead of wallowing in terminal uniqueness. 🙂

When I was in high school I identified as being an outsider. I was artsy fartsy. I wore weird clothes, was cutting my teeth as a musician and smoked loads of pot both on and off campus with a close knit group of self professed "freaks" like me. I believed at the time that I was held in utter disdain by the "straights" like the class president and the quarterback. Flash forward 30 years. I was at my class reunion talking to the aforementioned class president. "Wendy, I always thought you were so cool. Everybody admired you for doing your own thing." and the quarterback. "Man, you were always the coolest. I always wished I could be cool, too." E-gawds! What was this?!? AND I WAS TRYING SO HARD TO BE WEIRD! Personally, I think everybody is a little strange no matter WHO we are. Even the soccer mom with 2.3 kids in the burbs or the lawyer who aspires to be a politician. (Maybe especially her/him). We ARE all human, after all.

So there I was, a size 16 bride doing my wednesday morning wedding with no groomsmen (but three bridesmaids) and a secular ceremony that included my new step-daughters, a 15 minute reception, wearing a knee-length dress and gold, glittery nail polish, and i felt SO special and offbeat.

And the pictures were lovely. And I feel amazing about the memories.

But.

Just five months later, I saw my wedding pictures differently. Sure my groom wore a pink vest and "fun socks." Yeah, I basically didn't wear makeup because fuck it. But my photos started looking rather "vanilla" to me. Those "crazy" shocking things we chose to do seemed a distant memory. Less controversial, but not in a reassuring way. More like in a, "I wish I'd been MORE outside the box. I wish I'd had more fun hair, a louder dress, more colorful flowers…" the list goes on and on. The wedding turned out less "Off Beat" and more "Classic." Which suits us in that my husband and I feel most of what we love about each other and ourselves is how we feel our inner qualities set us apart, not our tattoos or punk hair.

But I still like tattoos, and have none. I adore artificially colored hair, but settle with blondes and reds because of my corporate job. Inside, I'm a pansexual artsy fiend who adores dancing like crazy and the word Fuck and a trillion other things that "normative culture" isn't as psyched about. And none of that was reflected in my wedding, looking back.

I regret it, but I can't help but think back to what I told myself: if you have blue nails, and cat-eye makeup, and a red dress… you will feel costumey. Not that doing those things are bad, but most days I don't have nail polish or makeup. I prefer neutrals. So I played it safe hoping for that "timeless" feel rather than risking feeling unnatural and trendy.

So in hindsight, hell yeah I wish I'd had done everything in a more risque vibe. I wish I'd eloped and worn red and followed my heart and not acted on fear. But that's SO EASY to say having done the "safer" route. I can all but guarantee that had I done the risque-wedding, I would have wished I'd done the white-bride thang.

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